PES Chronicles

September the 1st. Where does the time go? Give it eight months, and we’ll be looking forward to the first news about PES2012. Meanwhile…

I’m at the very sharp end of season 2014 in my PES6(360) Master League career. I was five points clear at the top of the table and looking a certainty for the league championship. But I’m now level on points with London FC, who were my most recent opponents.

It was one of the most ridiculous games of Pro Evolution Soccer that I have ever played in all these long years. London FC were three points behind me with a handful of league matches to go. We all know what Master League likes to do with a season run-in. It likes things to be close. So I knew, going in, that I’d have to play really well and focus really hard to get the win that would put me 6 points clear with a few matches left. I’d have settled for a point.

I lost 0-1. London FC got a scrappy, scrambled goal in the 8th minute or thereabouts. The final whistle might just as well have gone right then, because I was never going to be allowed to score. I had 19 shots, 12 on target. I hit the post or crossbar four times. FOUR TIMES.

PES6(360), and PES in general, is not noted for its post/crossbar-hitting tendencies. Three of the post/crossbar hits were gilt-edged chances, one-on-ones, or tap-ins to a fairly empty net. One resulted from a square pass to an unmarked striker that left the keeper and defenders stranded. It was an open goal, Tevez-style. I knew I needed the goal, so I made sure of it (I thought). I gave the shoot button the most delicate of taps… Only to see the ball balloon ridiculously high in the air and clang back from the crossbar and get cleared to safety. Like I said, this was one of four. FOUR.

I call major, undisguised shenanigans on the game here. It’s on occasions like this that I actually feel embarrassed to be playing a computer game. I’m so obviously being played myself.

Anyway. I’ve been here before, and will be here again. With four league matches left I’m still in 1st place, but only on goals scored.

I’m in two Cup Finals. The Division 1 Cup and the Masters Cup. I’d like to win them both and the league title too and claim a minor Treble before the major Treble next season. With the PES2011 and FIFA11 demos arriving within weeks (or days?), there’s pressure on. I would still play this career through to some kind of conclusion after the demos arrive—but my head would be elsewhere, I know it would. So I’d like to clear the decks completely before they get here.

It’s much too early for me to be definite about any of this, but I feel as if I have passed a threshold in PES2010. The game certainly isn’t easy for me now. But it no longer feels as difficult as it used to.

I’ve opened up a five-point gap at the top of the table. By this stage, coming up on the mid-season transfer window, I’ve played most of the other top teams, and beaten them all. The game is still up to its old tricks, but having passed that threshold I feel that I’m a match for anything now.

I played Porto at their place and opened up a 0-2 lead inside 15 minutes, which is pretty good considering they’re a top 3 side this season. However, by half-time the score was 2-2, and they were two of the dodgiest goals I’ve ever conceded. The second one came about after a Porto attacker jinked and turned on the wing until he got his cross in. I’d been trying to ‘block-and-shepherd’ using secondary pressure and R2 shielding. The cross deflected off my blocking player’s shoulder, which flattened and slowed the path of the ball—and also triggered a bizarre glitch in the Matrix. I had three defenders in a line who failed to react to the ball rolling slowly by a few yards away. Meanwhile, I could see a lone Porto attacker sprinting like an Olympic champion from 30 yards away. And none of the defenders would respond to me…

I must have twatted every button on the controller, desperate to get control of a player. But the game wouldn’t move control from my cross-blocking midfielder. Obviously, some part of the game still thought I should have control of that player. The sprinting Porto striker dashed in between my static defence and smashed the ball past my keeper. 2-2...

I still can’t make up my mind. Was it a random glitch of the sort you’re bound to see if you play any computer game for nearly 300 hours? Or was it context-driven shenanigans, aka scripting, being unusually very blatant about it?

It didn’t matter. I scored a great winner partway through the second half with my created player, ‘not-Greg’. He’s nearing his mid-thirties now and currently having a Ryan Giggs-style Indian summer at the end of his career.

I’m through to the quarter finals of the D1 Cup after a tough two legs against Blackburn in the last 16. 0-0 at my place was a good result, I thought. But then it was 0-0 at theirs too. I faced extra time and possible penalties. This was a match where I had a strong suspicion the game wanted extra time. I had several clearcut chances that I know I didn’t do anything different from normal with, but they all went wide or high. One in particular was very dodgy: a free header from the six-yard line that somehow contrived to sail ten yards wide and nearly hit the corner flag. At that point I kind of knew I’d be playing extra time. I scored twice in extra time, though, to ease through eventually.

And in Europe I will qualify from the group with no difficulties. A second successive Treble, that would put the capstone on an unforgettable ML career, is within reach.

Here are some random goals from the season so far:

I have ended the season with one trophy, just one: the Champions League. I finished 2nd in the domestic league. Almost incidentally, that’s now 5 straight seasons for me without a Division 1 title. And to think that at one point I was actually worried the title would be too easy every season…

It’s still been a pretty good season. I should look on the bright side. My ranking has shot up to 7th in the ML world. I’ve earned lots of cash. Financially I’m very well placed for next season, better than I have been for a long time. But compared to what I could have won—and was poised to win until just a few matches before the end—it’s a disappointment.

Barcelona were my opponents in the Champions League final. They were just as strangely weak as they were in our previous few meetings. I battered them 6-1. The disappointment and hurt after losing the D1 Cup final was still strong. I was definitely in the mood.

For all that I was still hurtin’ post-Treble-collapse, I enjoyed the match and really enjoyed the win. As we have seen this week, the Champions League is still a big deal in European club football. Arguably it’s the last club cup competition that still has any meaning at all. My satisfaction at winning it in ML was immense. Aaah, but it’s no Treble, I couldn’t help thinking.

Still. If not a Treble, how about a title and Champs League double? With a few matches left I was level on points at the top of the table with Liverpool. My goal difference was considerably worse, but I felt confident that all I needed was the points, and Liverpool would slip up.

There’s the current year 2024 Liverpool First XI, on the left. For a team that’s just come back up from Division 2 this season, they’ve done very well.

Alas, one of my last opponents were the second-from-bottom Burnley. They are my bogey team in this career. I lost 1-0, and thought that was that. But no… with the game’s hard-coded (IMO) design to basically keep the human player in it, Liverpool had conveniently lost as well.

In fact, we’d both been overtaken by Rosenborg. They were at the top heading into the final game, a point ahead of Liverpool and myself. My final fixture was against Spurs or somebody—tough but beatable. Rosenborg’s and Liverpool’s last fixture was against… each other. Liverpool vs Rosenborg. If that match was a draw, and I won mine, I’d win the title! But any positive result either way and that team would win the title, not me, whatever I did.

I won my match 1-0 (and it was tense). I’d done my bit. But Liverpool beat Rosenborg 2-0, and won the title. I finished 2nd, missing out on goal difference. It has been a poor goal-scoring season for me, so I can’t complain about that. An exciting end to the season, as so many of them are.

The Division 1 Best XI of the season came in—Capuano and Munitis made it:

And once again I have to be philosophical about not winning the Treble that I want so badly. I have to shrug my shoulders and say “there’s always next season”… And that’s true, and I can be philosophical about it, but the Treble’s got to happen soon. It’s just got to.

And season 12 had started off so well… I was 2nd after 10 games, scoring freely, and everything was fine. Just dandy. But now things have changed. I’ve played my way through to the mid-season point—that’s another 8 league matches, and all of the Champions League group stage. In the latter competition, I’ve sailed through, no problems at all. But in the League? There I have hit a mysterious slump.

Suddenly it’s a run of games where I can’t win, and can hardly score a goal—and they’re all league games. In the Champs League I’m as free-scoring as I’ve been all season, and winning. In the league it’s as if an invisible hand is squeezing all the pizzazz out of my team. I smell a giant rat.

I had a key game against Tottenham, currently the all-conquering new stars of Division 1. I won it 1-0 with an ugly, deflected, scrambled goal in the last minute. There hasn’t been much else to cheer me up. After a few dodgy seasons, Manchester City are back as a major force. They’ve battered me every time I’ve met them this season, and they did so again, 0-3 at home.

The PES2010 AI has a method of getting the ball off you that I call ‘tangle and snatch’. Tangle and snatch. It might sound like the next buddy cop movie, or a corny, straight-to-digital-TV cop show, but it’s not that. It’s what PES2010 does to you when it decides it wants the ball and you are no longer allowed to have it. As is well known, response times in PES2010 are not what they were in previous iterations of the franchise. This enables the AI to swarm you with its players, and tangle you up, and snatch possession.

I know, I know. I just need to play better. I do know that. But I think I’m allowed to nurse some PES-based paranoia. When you sink this many hours into a game (217 and counting), you’re entitled to think it might be coming to get you sometimes.

After this very dodgy run of poor league form, I find myself 10 points off the pace at the halfway stage. The title is not out of reach. As long as I play well enough, the same invisble hand that I’ve sensed keeping me down will raise me up. Or bring other teams down, which amounts to the same thing.

My Champions League group has been a cakewalk. I had trouble in one match, against FC Basel 1895, who turned in the statutory Brazilliant performance that random teams in ML have sometimes just got to do. Otherwise I won them all and scored a nice few goals. I even simmed the meaningless last fixture against Atalanta. I haven’t simmed a match for about 8 seasons now. I’ll only ever do so under circumstances like this, when there could be no effect on any league standings. The game awarded me a 2-1 win, which was good of it.

I’ll face RC Lens in the quarter final. This is the stage where I hit a brick wall last season. I’ll try to be careful against Lens. Also in the draw—for the second season running—was PES United, among a few other bizarre teams.

Finally a few goals from the current period. The frst two are both from McCann, my Youth DMF who has turned into a 26-year-old veteran of many a midfield skirmish. Both of his goals look like the same goal, on first viewing. But they’re really not. This impression is boosted by them both coming against teams wearing near-identical kits: Arsenal in the first case, Aston Villa in the second. And finally in theclip there’s a super-duper-long-ranger from Zaki in the Champions League. I do love me some distance shooting. I don’t mean to resurrect old grievances, but SUCK ON THIS, you timid, shot-shy Gamescom people!

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